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Papers by Ana Paula Lima Duarte

Scientific reports, Jan 23, 2017

Burying beetles (Nicrophorus vespilloides) breed on small vertebrate carcasses, which they shave ... more Burying beetles (Nicrophorus vespilloides) breed on small vertebrate carcasses, which they shave and smear with antimicrobial exudates. Producing antimicrobials imposes a fitness cost on burying beetles, which rises with the potency of the antimicrobial defence. Burying beetles also carry phoretic mites (Poecilochirus carabi complex), which breed alongside them on the carcass. Here we test the novel hypothesis that P. carabi mites assist burying beetles in clearing the carcass of bacteria as a side-effect of grazing on the carrion. We manipulated the bacterial environment on carcasses and measured the effect on the beetle in the presence and absence of mites. With next-generation sequencing, we investigated how mites influence the bacterial communities on the carcass. We show that mites: 1) cause beetles to reduce the antibacterial activity of their exudates but 2) there are no consistent fitness benefits of breeding alongside mites. We also find that mites increase bacterial divers...

The Journal of animal ecology, Jan 6, 2017

1.The role of bacteria in animal development, ecology and evolution is increasingly well-understo... more 1.The role of bacteria in animal development, ecology and evolution is increasingly well-understood, yet little is known of how animal behaviour affects bacterial communities. Animals that benefit from defending a key resource from microbial competitors are likely to evolve behaviours to control or manipulate the animal's associated external microbiota. 2.We describe four possible mechanisms by which animals could gain a competitive edge by disrupting a rival bacterial community: 'weeding', 'seeding', 'replanting' and 'preserving'. By combining detailed behavioural observations with molecular and bioinformatic analyses, we then test which of these mechanisms best explains how burying beetles, Nicrophorus vespilloides, manipulate the bacterial communities on their carcass breeding resource. 3.Burying beetles are a suitable species to study how animals manage external microbiota because reproduction revolves around a small vertebrate carcass. Parent...

It is still poorly understood how animal behaviour shapes bacterial communities and their evoluti... more It is still poorly understood how animal behaviour shapes bacterial communities and their evolution. We use burying beetles, Nicrophorus vespilloides, to investigate how animal behaviour impacts the assembly of bacterial communities. Burying beetles use small vertebrate carcasses as breeding resources, which they roll into a ball, smear with antimicrobial exudates and bury. Using high-throughput sequencing we characterize bacterial communities on fresh mouse carcasses, aged carcasses prepared by beetles, and aged carcasses that were manually buried. The long-standing hypothesis that burying beetles ‘clean’ the carcass from bacteria is refuted, as we found higher loads of bacterial DNA in beetle-prepared carcasses. Beetle-prepared carcasses were similar to fresh carcasses in terms of species richness and diversity. Beetle-prepared carcasses distinguish themselves from manually buried carcasses by the reduction of groups such as Proteobacteria and increase of groups such as Flavobacte...

Requirement traceability is used to ensure consistency among the artifacts created during the dev... more Requirement traceability is used to ensure consistency among the artifacts created during the development and maintenance of software products. An effective traceability approach depends on several factors such as architecture, technical modeling tools, among others. The implementation of traceability in the organizations is still a challenge even many studies have been conducted on the subject. We may point out some reasons for that: difficulties of maintaining updated information about requirements and integrating all generated data from software development life-cycle, besides the lack of commercial tools for implementing methods and techniques for integrated traceability to the development process. Moreover, as requirements evolve, keeping tracking of the changes is also difficult. The aim of this work is to evaluate traceability approaches focusing on software product tra- ceability by a systematic review. We conduct a series of interviews with practitioners to complement the e...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021

Parental care can be partitioned into traits that involve direct engagement with offspring and tr... more Parental care can be partitioned into traits that involve direct engagement with offspring and traits that are expressed as an extended phenotype and influence the developmental environment, such as constructing a nursery. Here, we use experimental evolution to test whether parents can evolve modifications in nursery construction when they are experimentally prevented from supplying care directly to offspring. We exposed replicate experimental populations of burying beetles (Nicrophorus vespilloides) to different regimes of posthatching care by allowing larvae to develop in the presence (Full Care) or absence of parents (No Care). After only 13 generations of experimental evolution, we found an adaptive evolutionary increase in the pace at which parents in the No Care populations converted a dead body into a carrion nest for larvae. Cross-fostering experiments further revealed that No Care larvae performed better on a carrion nest prepared by No Care parents than did Full Care larva...

Scientific reports, Jan 23, 2017

Burying beetles (Nicrophorus vespilloides) breed on small vertebrate carcasses, which they shave ... more Burying beetles (Nicrophorus vespilloides) breed on small vertebrate carcasses, which they shave and smear with antimicrobial exudates. Producing antimicrobials imposes a fitness cost on burying beetles, which rises with the potency of the antimicrobial defence. Burying beetles also carry phoretic mites (Poecilochirus carabi complex), which breed alongside them on the carcass. Here we test the novel hypothesis that P. carabi mites assist burying beetles in clearing the carcass of bacteria as a side-effect of grazing on the carrion. We manipulated the bacterial environment on carcasses and measured the effect on the beetle in the presence and absence of mites. With next-generation sequencing, we investigated how mites influence the bacterial communities on the carcass. We show that mites: 1) cause beetles to reduce the antibacterial activity of their exudates but 2) there are no consistent fitness benefits of breeding alongside mites. We also find that mites increase bacterial divers...

The Journal of animal ecology, Jan 6, 2017

1.The role of bacteria in animal development, ecology and evolution is increasingly well-understo... more 1.The role of bacteria in animal development, ecology and evolution is increasingly well-understood, yet little is known of how animal behaviour affects bacterial communities. Animals that benefit from defending a key resource from microbial competitors are likely to evolve behaviours to control or manipulate the animal's associated external microbiota. 2.We describe four possible mechanisms by which animals could gain a competitive edge by disrupting a rival bacterial community: 'weeding', 'seeding', 'replanting' and 'preserving'. By combining detailed behavioural observations with molecular and bioinformatic analyses, we then test which of these mechanisms best explains how burying beetles, Nicrophorus vespilloides, manipulate the bacterial communities on their carcass breeding resource. 3.Burying beetles are a suitable species to study how animals manage external microbiota because reproduction revolves around a small vertebrate carcass. Parent...

It is still poorly understood how animal behaviour shapes bacterial communities and their evoluti... more It is still poorly understood how animal behaviour shapes bacterial communities and their evolution. We use burying beetles, Nicrophorus vespilloides, to investigate how animal behaviour impacts the assembly of bacterial communities. Burying beetles use small vertebrate carcasses as breeding resources, which they roll into a ball, smear with antimicrobial exudates and bury. Using high-throughput sequencing we characterize bacterial communities on fresh mouse carcasses, aged carcasses prepared by beetles, and aged carcasses that were manually buried. The long-standing hypothesis that burying beetles ‘clean’ the carcass from bacteria is refuted, as we found higher loads of bacterial DNA in beetle-prepared carcasses. Beetle-prepared carcasses were similar to fresh carcasses in terms of species richness and diversity. Beetle-prepared carcasses distinguish themselves from manually buried carcasses by the reduction of groups such as Proteobacteria and increase of groups such as Flavobacte...

Requirement traceability is used to ensure consistency among the artifacts created during the dev... more Requirement traceability is used to ensure consistency among the artifacts created during the development and maintenance of software products. An effective traceability approach depends on several factors such as architecture, technical modeling tools, among others. The implementation of traceability in the organizations is still a challenge even many studies have been conducted on the subject. We may point out some reasons for that: difficulties of maintaining updated information about requirements and integrating all generated data from software development life-cycle, besides the lack of commercial tools for implementing methods and techniques for integrated traceability to the development process. Moreover, as requirements evolve, keeping tracking of the changes is also difficult. The aim of this work is to evaluate traceability approaches focusing on software product tra- ceability by a systematic review. We conduct a series of interviews with practitioners to complement the e...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021

Parental care can be partitioned into traits that involve direct engagement with offspring and tr... more Parental care can be partitioned into traits that involve direct engagement with offspring and traits that are expressed as an extended phenotype and influence the developmental environment, such as constructing a nursery. Here, we use experimental evolution to test whether parents can evolve modifications in nursery construction when they are experimentally prevented from supplying care directly to offspring. We exposed replicate experimental populations of burying beetles (Nicrophorus vespilloides) to different regimes of posthatching care by allowing larvae to develop in the presence (Full Care) or absence of parents (No Care). After only 13 generations of experimental evolution, we found an adaptive evolutionary increase in the pace at which parents in the No Care populations converted a dead body into a carrion nest for larvae. Cross-fostering experiments further revealed that No Care larvae performed better on a carrion nest prepared by No Care parents than did Full Care larva...